UK

Many of us have mourned the slow descent of the UK's government into tyrrany, especially as it seems to offer a slightly-accelerated view of the trends in our own nation.  It's sometimes useful to remember that not everyone in the UK is ready to go quietly into the night.

Not many people would volunteer to wear the classic prisoner's anklet that reports their location to a satellite monitoring system regularly.  It would be, rightly, considered an invasion of privacy -- something society imposes on convicted criminals who pose a demonstrated threat to innocent people.  But millions of people carry cell phones with them everyone and don't give it a second thought.

Perhaps they don't realize that their cell phone is a tracking technology almost as powerful as the monitoring devices used on prisoners.  Technology firms in the UK are already marketing this as a "service", one that covers not only where the cell phone is now but where it has been in the past.  While those services claim to require consent, the underlying technology does not, and that means governments (and private parties through the court system) will have access to the data with no consent required and most likely no opportunity to contest the release.

Brin's The Transparent Society is looking more prophetic by the day.

I wish I wasn't serious.

"What'll they do next -- ban knives?" has long been a joke among gun owners.  Unfortunately, it's not a joke anymore.  Doctors across the pond are calling for a ban on kitchen knives. 

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon. The research is published in the British Medical Journal. The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

This is just embarassing.  Of course, the French were there first:

French laws in the 17th century decreed that the tips of table and street knives be ground smooth.

C'mon, folks.  The problem isn't having a knife with a point available.   The problem is when you decide to stab someone with it!

UPDATE: Clayton has more.

UPDATE: Let's not forget that switchblades are banned in the US, and most states (including Texas) have laws banning the carry of most sharp objects (knives, swords, etc) suitable for use as weapons.

... since it seems that the UK has shelved plans to call for a referendum on the proposed EU Constitution, in light of "No" votes in France and the Netherlands.  In theory, the constitution required universal ratification, and thus following these two no votes it cannot go forward.  In practice, the beaurocrats will be trying to find some way around that. 

Power Line suggests that the vote would have been about 64% against, had it been held.

AlphaPatriot is running a five-part series on gun crime. 

1. Dunblane, Gun Laws, and Violence
   
2. Yobs and ASBOs
3. Even More Failed Policies
   

Yes, that's right.  You need a government license to sell a sharp piece of metal.  You'll need to record the buyer's name and address.  The UK has implemented knife registration, never mind that there's no way to match up a specific knife to a specific crime scene the way that sometimes you can match up a specific bullet to a specific gun.  Even the paper-thin justification for registration that the convenient fiction of ballistic fingerprinting provides has been discarded. 

I'd say the UK is well overdue for a German invasion attempt to remind them of why weapons are important and useful tools.  All it will take is another generation or two and they won't even be able to stand up to the French.

The highlights:

• Giving police unconditional powers of arrest when they suspect someone of carrying a knife or "offensive weapon"
• Requiring the purchaser of a "non-domestic" knife to be over 17.
• Banning swords, with the exception of "ceremonial, religious, sporting, or cultural purposes" (hint: that would be all of them; swords are no longer practical self-defense weapons).
• Individual licensing of sword purchases (yes, that's right; beg for permission to buy each one), along the same lines as a firearm license.

From my cold, dead hands

Hat tip to Ravnwood.

Proof that even a surveillance state can't protect you from terrorism.  Obviously, the terrorists are hoping the British will react like the Spanish, and flee from the sight of blood and terror amongst their own.  I think the nation, and particularly Tony Blair, are made of stronger stuff than that, despite the video cameras and firearm bans.   UPDATE: Reports are saying at or over 1000 wounded.  I am without words. UPDATE: What he said.

A police Commissioner in the UK, Sir Ian Blair, has admitted in the context of an advertising campaign that gun control doesn't work without the cooperation of the populace:

He said: "It works because it drives home the overwhelming need for individuals within communities to recognise that police cannot tackle the menace of gun crime without their action and support."

Sir Ian added it was a timely crusade after reports that one in 10 teenage schoolboys have carried a gun in the past year.

Handguns are banned there, and long guns are heavily restricted, and yet they can't stop schoolboys from carrying firearms.

If you're a police officer in the UK, it's OK to shoot someone without warning and based only on unsupported allegations that they have a firearm.  Even if the firearm turns out to be a table leg.  The mere presence of the alleged "firearm", which was wrapped in a plastic bag, makes it self-defense, if you listen to the judge -- who overruled the jury's finding that the shooting was unlawful.

Remember, knights can kill peasants with impunity.  They are, after all, only peasants.

The UK's ongoing experiment with deploying doubleplusgood surveillance cameras to get Orwell's social plan back on schedule FIGHT CRIME PROTECT THE GOOD CITIZENS OF OCEANIA FROM THE TERRORIST THREAT OF EURASIA!  doesn't seem to be producing the expected results...

Closed circuit TV systems are of little use in the fight against crime, a surprise government report claims today.

Home Office researchers who studied 14 schemes across Britain found that only one had brought a clear fall in the local crime rate.

While there was strong public support for CCTV before it was installed, opinion began to shift when people realised the cameras made little difference.

Of course, there are no plans to remove the cameras, or stop the surveillance of private citizens in public spaces.  Hat tip to the geek for this one.

 

A Conservative Parliamentary candidate has been suspended after he was pictured on the internet with a range of guns, rifles and a hunting knife. An inquiry is now to be held into why Robert Oulds, the prospective MP for Slough in Berkshire, appeared with the weapons in the camera phone images.

A party spokesman said: "We take this matter extremely seriously. "We have suspended Mr Oulds from the list of candidates, and as candidate for Slough, with immediate effect."

Did you think that you could still vote for politicians that support the policies you want in Britain? Obviously not, because even the Conservative party won't stand up for your gun rights and will toss out any politician who even thinks about it.

TONY Blair has sensationally urged schools across Britain to introduce random drug-testing following the News of the World's chilling exposé of the growing menace in our classrooms.

The Prime Minister revealed that the government is to send historic new guidelines to headmasters giving them the power to take urine samples from pupils AND use sniffer dogs to search school grounds for drugs.

"We can't force them to do it but if heads believe they have a problem in their school, then they should be able to do random drug-testing," said Mr Blair in our exclusive interview.

DEADLY weapons were seized by police as a crackdown on violent behaviour got under way in Inverclyde. Officers carried out 186 searches and uncovered 10 weapons during swoops over the weekend. They targeted ?hot spots? and stopped and searched gangs of young people acting suspiciously.

During the searches they confiscated:

• Four lock knives
• One Stanley knife
• One kitchen knife
• Two baton-style clubs
• Three bits of wood that had been fashioned into weapons.

Greenock police Inspector Charlie Paul said: "The fact we got 10 weapons out of more than 180 searches is a good result."

This article has inspired me to rename my "Gun Control" category to Arms Control. Because guns aren't the only weapons that matter.

One of the difficulties of being a Libertarian is answering the same questions over and over and over again, from people who don't quite get it. One of those is "Who would build the roads?" Generally, they assume that roads are something that only government can afford to build properly.

Now, it's true that building roads has some problems that are difficult to solve in a free market. But that doesn't make them any easier to solve with government. Witness the British government's plan to tax drivers $2.50 per mile with GPS-enabled toll systems. Sure. Whack the privacy issue AND the economic issue at the same time. At those prices no one will drive.

Now, unlike the rest of Europe, I've BEEN to England. I've walked the streets of London -- and I've taken taxis, subways, and the like. You don't need a car to get around in the city, for the most part. But if people didn't WANT them, there wouldn't be a traffic problem. And there's a reason people want them, whether it's convenience, ego, or just wanting to be able to make it out to their house in the countryside.

What we have here is a government road-building operation that is apparantly unable or unwilling to build roads properly, preferring to charge ruinous tolls that will effectively prohibit regular access by car to the areas where the tolls are applied. This is not a failure of private enterprise, it's a failure of government.

David Blunkett has given his backing to The Sunday Telegraph's campaign to change the law to give homeowners more rights to protect themselves against burglars.

The Home Secretary said yesterday that he was "deeply sympathetic" to those who thought the law should do everything possible to help householders against intruders - and signalled that government action was likely.

This might be just a floater, rather than a serious change of policy, but even vague rumblings are welcome at this point. England has been heading in the wrong direction for a long time and it's about time they started considering a change of course. Check out the comments from The Smallest Minority on this issue as well; he's had a running argument with a left-wing blogger about self-defense in England that's worth reading back in order to understand the magnitude of this change.

Courtesy of The Smallest Minority and No Quarters comes this article in the news.telegraph advocating a right to self-defense in the UK. And doing it with some very graphic, shocking pictures. The people who are willing to commit these crimes are willing to do anything they need to, and it's hard for 80-year-old women to effectively defend themselves... without a gun.

First Minister Jack McConnell has announced a five-point programme to clamp down on knife crime. The maximum jail term for possessing an offensive weapon will be doubled from two years to four under the proposals. He wants to ban the sale of swords and introduce a licensing scheme for retailers selling knives. He also announced plans to give police more powers of search and arrest and to increase the age limit for buying a knife from 16 to 18.

Somehow, I don't think that's going to accomplish anything.

In an attempt to allay fears about rising levels of violence, shops will be banned from selling knives to under-18s and stiffer penalties will be imposed on those caught carrying knives on the street. David Blunkett, the home secretary, wants a five-year sentence -- similar to that for people carrying guns -- to be the penalty for those in possession of knives.

So explain to me here. When the UK bans handguns, their handgun crime problem soars, even though gun control has been imposed gradually over a long period of time and the UK's island nature makes it easier to interdict smuggling. One would logically expect that gun control would work in the UK if it will work anywhere, and yet, it clearly does not. Despite this, the government is moving towards banning knives. Knives are an everyday household item.

How successful do you think the government will be in eliminating knives?

Not unless they eliminate steak first, I'm thinking.

UPDATE: Nicki Fellenzer has comments.

There's a saying in the US that expresses the fundamental principle of self-defense as applied to the most common scenario: "A man's home is his castle." And traditionally, we have held that every man has the right to defend that castle. The law varies on the details: when it's OK to shoot an intruder, whether they need to be in your house or just on your property, how zealously the local prosecutors or police will look for a flaw in your actions. But the core principle is intact. Americans have a recognized right under the law to defend themselves against violent attack in their home by any means necessary.

The saying originated in the UK, where castles are a much larger part of the landscape, and it originated in a right of defense against government intrusion (by means of search, a protection echoed in the 4th Amendment) as well as against criminals. But the UK has forgotten it's heritage, and now faces a long, hard struggle to regain the right of self-defense. To understand just how far they have to go, both legally and culturally, we can consider a recent editorial on the controversy sarcastically entitled My right to kill an intruder in my home? Aye, right.

So there we have it, in the starkest terms. It's official. Senior police officers in both Scotland and England say it's acceptable for householders to use weapons against intruders in their own house.

We must begin by recognizing that, yes, senior police officers have indeed expressed that it is acceptable for householders to use weapons against intruders in their own house. One of those police officers made his statement to advocate changes in the law to recognize the right of self-defense, and the other was defending the current law on the basis of prosecutorial discretion around the idea of "reasonable force".

"Reasonable force" is what you are allowed to use against a burglar who has invaded your home and attacked you.

The courts have set precedents regarding what reasonable force actually is. Firearms are not reasonable force. Knives are not reasonable force. Canes are not reasonable force. So, apparantly, reasonable force includes the right to challenge your burglar to a boxing match, even if he's a 20-year-old professional criminal and you are a blind 63-year-old. Of course, figuring out that that last case was OK required a three-week murder investigation.

Rather than locking ourselves in the bathroom and whimpering, they say, or phoning for help in an agonised whisper like they do in the movies, we should simply attack any intruders we find in our house, secure in the knowledge that we should not be prosecuted if we injure or kill them.

Should not be, no. But as the examples above demonstrate, if you fight back against an intruder in the UK you can expect to be treated as the criminal.

On no less an authority than Tom Buchan, president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, we learn that our rights are primary. "If I heard intruders downstairs, would I lock myself in the bedroom and phone the police and shout: "Go away, bad burglar," or would I go down the stairs? I think I am likely to do the latter . . . I would do what most people would and pick up the first thing that comes to hand."

And as a police officer, he can probably expect to get away with this. The average citizen can't, or at a minimum is substantially deterred.

OK, so let's rehearse this. You are the average woman, 5ft 3in, say, maybe nine-and-a-half, 10 stone, woken from a deep sleep, and you're suddenly aware that someone is in your house. With the prowess of an SAS-trained killer, you slide from under the duvet, picking up the pick-axe handle that you keep lying by the bed.

Disregarding the dark, you glide downstairs and launch yourself at the intruder, ? la Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels, with a 360-degree spinning side kick. Your flying front foot catches your assailant in the solar plexus, sending him smashing against the wall. You do a rapid double chop to his neck with the outside-edge of your iron hands ? pow! pow! ? then you smite him across the jaw with the pick-axe handle, and stamp on his genitals for good measure. Easy peasy.

That's a nice fantasy, and if life was like the movies, maybe it would turn out that way. But reality isn't so pretty. A woman attempting to defend herself from a criminal with a club isn't likely to have much success. Even your average athletic male will be at a disadvantage against the average criminal, who has quite likely come prepared -- physically and psychologically -- for a confrontation.

In the UK, self-defense is not considered a valid reason to own a firearm. That policy leaves women and the elderly defenseless against a significant criminal population.

At this point, one of two things happens. One is that you realise the "burglar" is in fact your husband, sneaking home from the pub. The other is that you wise up to the terminal silliness of the suggestion that the average man or woman, faced with an intruder in the middle of the night, would be inclined to go on the attack...

She's right that most people would not be inclined to attack a criminal invading their home. Because they have been denied the tools of self-defense, they recognize that their chances against a criminal are no better than even and a confrontation would most likely result in serious injury, perhaps even death -- theirs, rather than the criminal's. But we're not talking about people going "on the attack". We're talking about people fighting for their lives against criminals who have broken into their homes and are attacking them!

That's the core value that separates criminals from honest men: violence in self-defense, not in aggression. The criminal picks the time, place, and manner of the confrontation; the only thing their victim can do is defend themselves as best they can under the circumstances. We don't have the right to second-guess what they do in a situation they didn't choose to be in.

It strikes me, in the present scary climate, that locking yourself in the bathroom and phoning for help are acutely rational things to do, for no matter how precious the goods being stolen, they are replaceable. Jewels, DVDs, car keys . . . so what? Lives, as City financier John Monckton and his wife have learned so dreadfully, matter much, much more.

Goods can be replaced, and it may be a good idea to hide rather than confront a burglar if you are not prepared to defend yourself. But this line of argument continues along the mistaken idea that a victim has the ability to choose whether to confront the criminal or not. There is no such choice. The criminal initiates the confrontation by breaking into the home -- and often, in the UK, it's easier to convince someone to let you in and then overpower them than it is to break in through a barred window or locked door.

And then there's the principle of the thing. Submitting to burglary by cowering in your bathroom while the burglars make off with what you have worked hard to acquire does nothing to discourage the criminals from coming back next week. The right to defend yourself, your family, and your property is fundamental.

People in the UK no longer have the right to own effective weapons for self-defense. Their government has removed any options other than waiting for the police. This renders the population helpless to resist criminals, and forces those who are not accomplished martial artists into the degrading experience of hiding in a bathroom hoping that the criminals are only after your possessions and not after you personally.

So do you have a right to resist a burglar in your home? Most certainly -- although the law in the UK right now is reluctant to recognize it. More importantly, though, you have an obligation to do so. An obligation to your own dignity and self-respect.

This is not to deny that there is an important issue to be explored (or exploited, if you're a politician heading up to a general election). A Conservative MP, Patrick Mercer, is putting forward a private member's bill to amend the Criminal Law Act of 1967, making it clear that householders can use force when they find an intruder in their home. "Whatever force is necessary" will replace "reasonable force", under the existing legislation.

How cynical this author is about allowing citizens the right to defend themselves against criminals! Does she ever stop to wonder why people might vote for politicians who supported such a law? Perhaps they are tired of being legally disarmed and helpless. Perhaps they want a government that allows them to protect themselves, since there will never be enough police to protect everyone.

People would only face prosecution if the degree of force was "grossly disproportionate" ? such as that used by farmer Tony Martin when he shot and killed an unarmed burglar in his Norfolk farmhouse.

People are somehow under the impression that, because the burglar was unarmed, he presented no threat. On the contrary. Tony Martin lived in an isolated area and had been victimized by burglars many times leading up to the case in question. He didn't know the burglar was unarmed, and he certainly felt threatened. The burglar should know damn well that by breaking into someone's home he was putting himself at risk. That's all there is to it.

The dangers of heading, gung-ho, down the self-defence road, amending the law rather than applying existing law properly, is that people will resort to guns for self-defence, as they do in the US.

While I don't have any problem with people "resorting to guns for self-defense" (something that is, after all, a perfectly legitimate purpose for a firearm!), I do wonder how changing the law on resisting burglary will in any way change the laws on firearms. Last I checked, handguns are banned in the UK, and long guns are very strictly regulated. The police don't consider "self-defense" a valid reason for owning a firearm, and that's unlikely to change. But it's very telling that this author is so afraid of people having guns that she would rather they be beaten, raped, or dead.

In Oklahoma 12% of burglaries happen while householders are at home; in Britain the figure is over 50%. Why should Britons hide in the bathroom when they can shoot into the darkness and scare intruders off? Guns would start an irreversible spiral of violence which we should do everything possible to avoid.

And here we have the answer. This woman is engaging in one of the psychological compensation mechanisms for being helpless in a threatening situation: she is negotiating, in her own mind, with the burglars. If she agrees not to defend herself, so the reasoning goes, the burglars will surely agree not to hurt her. Thus, she fools herself into believing that she is safe without actually taking any precautions to increase her safety; taking precautions would require facing up to her fear, and to the fact that her government has forbidden her to own the only effective means of self-defense available to the average person.

It is exactly the same impulse that leads primitive cultures to make deals with invisible spirits or gods: those deals, however imaginary, offer a way to cope with things that are otherwise impossible to placate. It is better to sacrifice an ox to the sun god than to feel helpless waiting for the spring to come once again. And it is better to agree not to resist the burglars than to accept the fact that her government will not allow her to defend herself.

The only problem is, the bargain with the criminals is only in her mind. The criminals themselves are very real, and only one thing can stop them: a gun.

Four people were arrested last night during a police operation to crack down on gun crime. More than 100 people had their vehicles stopped as part of Operational Rosebowl, as officers - some of them armed - set up checkpoints around Bulwell and Bestwood. Although no one was found in possession of a gun the operation was hailed a success by Notts Police.

So... no guns found, but it's still a "success". Worse, this particular operation appears to have been based on the idea that if you stop 100 vehicles at a roadblock and demand ID, you will find someone to arrest, and damn the freedom of the other 96 or so that you had to let go.